Today, a blast from the past – an Entertainment Tonight report by Leonard Maltin on the popularity of animation from August 25th 1993. This was two years before the release of Toy Story, almost a year before the debut of The Lion King, heck, even a few months before the release of Nightmare Before Christmas. Cartoon Network was a little over a year old. 2D animation couldn’t have been hotter.
The event was Asifa-Hollywood’s Anifest. Captured on camera here is Simpsons director David Silverman, voice actresses June Foray and Lucille Bliss, even historian Stephen Worth. Ahhh, the good old days…
Jerry Beck is a writer, animation producer, college professor and author of more than 15 books on animation history. He is a former studio exec with Nickelodeon Movies and Disney, and has written for The Hollywood Reporter and Variety. He has curated cartoons for DVD and Blu-ray compilations and has lent his expertise to dozens of bonus documentaries and audio commentaries on such. Beck is currently on the faculty of CalArts in Valencia, UCLA in Westwood and Woodbury University in Burbank – teaching animation history. More about Jerry Beck [
I think I see Tony Bancroft and Russ Edmonds at around the 1:04 mark.
Leonard did a very nice piece on the death of Popeye voice Jack Mercer for ET during its very earliest years, so the show (at least as originally conceived) had at least some execs who didn’t think talking about animation was simply a waste of airtime.
Actually, J, I think it was Leonard himself who would push for coverage on animation. He’s actually a fairly well-respected animation historian. I still have the text book he wrote on the subject that we used during my ‘History of Animation’ class back in college (early- to mid-’90s).
Wow! I attended that AniFest convention! You can see a stage behind June Foray where she, Corey Burton and I don’t remember who else acted out a scene from Rocky & Bullwinkle. I can’t believe 20 years have elapsed since then! Somewhere I may still have the self-portrait artwork Eric Goldberg was autographing and handing out at that event . . .
It might be fun if you could get the announcement that Leonard Maltin made on “ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT” one year for what was the upcoming “PORKY PIG IN BLACK AND WHITE” festival. I remember this being announced close to Thanksgiving that year, and it ticked me off that I couldn’t attend, but it sure sounded like one of New York’s great animation events…and Leonard, Jerry Beck and other luminaries of animation commentary were going to be there, I’m sure. Of course, we now have a lot of the shorts included on various DVD sets, but there are some that still remain elusive, like “PORKY THE RAIN-MAKER” and “JEEPERS CREEPERS”. I miss those kinds of events to this day!
I’ll bet those $3,000 cels must be worth at least $20 by now.
Wouldn’t surprise me. I spotted one cel of a rabbit I have a drawing to I got for free!